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Show Notes
After the wild success of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass Experiment, the BBC brought Kneale’s Quatermass back again in 1955 for Quatermass II.
Simon and Eugene discuss.
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Episode Synopsis:
A radar post observes the arrival of yet another meteor. Under orders for secrecy, Capt. Dillon goes to investigate. The meteorite, broken, is found in a field, where a stunned farmer sits. His wife, in a panic, frantically worrying about her husband. Dillon and his men are under orders to do nothing about the meteors, but it’s damned curious and he decides to disobey his orders. He knows a guy that might make sense of it.
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Meanwhile, Prof Bernard Quatermass has just suffered a major failure in his professional life. His new, nuclear-powered exploratory rocket model, the Quatermass II, has gone off like a nuclear bomb in Australia. Oops. Good thing nobody lives in Australia. It’s backup ship, in Britain, has just been checked and it suffers from the same problem that caused the explosion. The design will have to be scrapped and Britain’s plans to expand the Empire to the moon are now gone.
It is to this dejected and beaten Quatermass that Dillon brings the meteor fragments. Quatermass and his team are intrigued. It’s an odd shape and indications are that it broke up after impact. Assembling the pieces, it’s hollow. Dillon explains that there are lots of these, and there was a big scare about them almost a year ago. After which, the government ordered the whole thing top secret, to avoid further panic.
Quatermass and Dillon investigate, first the farmer, who isn’t feeling well, and very unfriendly and unhelpful. They stop at a local pub and learn that the farmer isn’t typically like that and weird things are going on, ever since the government tore down an entire village and built their top secret research center at Winnerdon Flats. Quatermass and Dillon investigate and, ignoring the keep out signs, enter the facility grounds. A meteor comes down. Intact. Dillon reaches it first and it cracks open. For a moment, Quatermass thinks he sees something on Dillon’s face. Guards arrive, force Quatermass to leave, but take Dillon for medical care. Dillon tells Quatermass to leave him alone and go.
Quatermass meets a tramp, hiding in the wreckage of the village that was torn down. He tells him about the goings on and the new, pre-fab town that was built for the workers. They’re not very friendly. Not like the village that was torn down. On the ground, there are thousands of meteor fragments.
In pre-fab town, Quatermass is given a cold shoulder. The facility pays them well and asks silence in return. They don’t even have local police. It’s handled by the security from the base. Quatermass encounters a young girl who is acting strangely, and discovers she has a strange mark on her hand where she touched one of the meteors when is came down. He is run off before he can learn more.
Back at the rocket base, Quatermass’s team have reconstructed the meteor and it appears to be a small ballistic vessel of some kind.
In London, Quatermass first tries to enlist the police to help find out what happened to Dillon, but they are under orders to leave the research facility at Winnerdon Flats alone – by orders of Quatermass’ own ministry. Next he goes there and his contact, Fowler, clearly has some reservations about the project, too. He introduces him to MP Broadhead, who is also on a tear about the Winnerdon Flats facility. The plant is supposedly producing a new synthetic food in a top secret method to get a jump on the other countries, but spy satellites have found at least two other identical facilities in Brazil and Siberia. He takes Quatermass to a hearing, where all the other members are strangely zombie-like, and do not care what Broadhead is saying. Then Quatermass notices the same mark on one of them. He tells Broadhead privately, then he confronts the men with his reconstruction of the meteor ships. They are agitated and he is evicted.
Later, the conference room is empty, except for an insensate Broadhead, who now has the mark. Guards from Winnerdon Flats arrive and take him away, but not before telling Quatermass and Fowler that his investigation is over and everything at Winnerdon Flats is in order.
Fowler introduces Quatermass to Ward. Ward is in public relations and he’s been escorting top brass, politicos and celebrities to Winnerdons Flats on a regular basis. Weird drill, though, he just drops them off and never brings them back. But they do find their home somehow. Using Ward’s pass, the three of them go to the plant. The plant appears to be near completion and the non-infected workers have been given a few days off.
Back at the rocket base, Dr. Leo Pugh is talking to Paula, Quatermass’ daughter. Leo is a brilliant mathematician – the man that does the orbital calculations. He tells her all about how, in his childhood, he teachers used to make him perform mathematical tricks and tell him he was destined for greatness. It is a rambling, non sequitur speech that most certainly identifies Leo Pugh for a pivotal death later in the story.
At Winnerdon Flats, Quatermass and the gang investigate, without much resistance or interest from the zombie-like guards and workers. Quatermass recognizes the facility as being similar to their moonbase design. The domes would be used to recreate an alien atmosphere. Ward slips off to get into the dome. He succeeds, but is covered in the slime from the dome – deadly to humans and certainly not a revolutionary artificial foodstuff – at least not food for anything from Earth! Ward dies. Quatermass gets a sample of the slime and a device Ward handed him and they get away.
The rocket team have realized that swarms of meteors on such a trajectory must be coming from somewhere astronomically nearby. Leo’s math powers allow them to find the object, half a million miles out and approaching Earth. They calculate that it stays in a special orbital location, approaching and backing away from the Earth periodically. At its closest point, they release the meteors.
The composition of the slime leads them to believe the invasion is from the outer planets, most likely a moon of Saturn, and the device Ward recovered is a booby-trap, much like the meteors, containing an alien primed to take over a person.
Knowing that people are infected and controlled up to very high levels in the government, and fearing that the “final” invasion, to populate the completed dome is imminent, Fowler returns to the ministry to do some secret digging, and Quatermass contacts a journalist, Conrad, to break the story. Quatermass also has his team prepare the Quatermass II to fly to the alien asteroid, knowing that it is, effectively, a nuclear bomb.
Just as Fowler has made an important discovery, he also discovers one of the booby traps, and plays no more part in this story.
Quatermass takes Conrad to the town, tells him the story, takes him to the local pub where the locals are celebrating. Quatermass tries to warn them about the danger, but they don’t listen. Just then a meteor smashes into the pub. Within moments, zombie guards arrive searching for the meteor, but it is broken and they leave without it. Now, hundreds of the meteors are falling and the zombie guards are scouring the marsh recovering them. Quatermass sends Conrad to break the story, while he must go to see the dome.
At the pub, Conrad tries to phone in the story, with the locals listening, he tells his editor that he was infected when the meteor hit the pub and he’s fighting to get the story out before it is too late. The locals, overhearing the accusations, storm the facility. When the guards open fire on them, they take up arms and start fighting back.
Looking into the dome, Quatermass sees what he feared. Inside: a writhing, growing, Amonoid creature.
Quatermass meets up with the revolting workers, who have taken the dome control building. Quatermass explains they can kill the things in the dome by pumping pure oxygen in, which they start to do. Increasingly desperate, the facility controllers offer a truce to take them over to the dome and show them. Some of the workers agree, despite Quatermass’ urgings to the contrary. When the oxygen soon stops flowing, they discover the workers, killed and shoved into the pipeline to form a plug with their bodies. Enraged, the leader of the workers fires a captured bazooka at the dome, destroying it.
Quatermass escapes because he had a gas mask and finds Leo outside. Leo had come to find him, but was nearly killed when the deadly gas escaped the domes.
Back at the rocket base, preparations for launching the rocket have gone wrong. Dillion has returned with soldiers and taken control of the rocket silo.
Quatermass, with Leo’s help, seem to reach Dillon and convince him to let the launch go through, and, Quatermass and Leo take off for the alien asteroid.
As they reach the asteroid, Quatermass confronts Leo. He suspects he was overtaken by the aliens outside the facility. While Quatermass preps the rocket to explode, Leo escapes outside with a gun. When Quatermass follows, Leo explains that they’re going to use the rocket to carry even greater numbers of aliens back to Earth and will now kill Quatermass. When he fires, the recoil sends Leo hurtling into space. Quatermass, all the while listening to the sounds of Leo calling for help over the radio, returns to the rocket, launches the return capsule and detonates the nuclear motor, destroying the asteroid.
Dillon and the others are now free of the control and back to normal. Quatermass has succeeded. Quatermass looks at Leo’s empty chair knowing that his friend, tumbling helplessly in space towards his death, is free of the aliens, too.
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